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Monday, November 09, 2015

I don't envy J.J. Abrams for the high tension, high stakes situation he currently finds himself in. As writer/director of Disney's impending multi-billion dollar relaunch of the Star Wars franchise, Abrams is on the leading edge of what will either be hailed as a bold reclamation of a beloved brand, or a huge fizzle.

By the end of the year, The Force Awakens will finally be out, and we -- and Abrams -- will know whether he's destined to be deemed hero or villain by the gathered hordes of nerd-dom. But as a new interview with Wired reveals, the man behind Lost and Alias and the Star Trek reboot is sanguine about his place in the narrative, and the film he's made:

We are making the first in a new trilogy of movies, and it’s not very often that you get to work on something where you know there’s a continuum, where you know it’s basically part seven of nine—at least. That’s a very interesting way to approach a story, and it’s kind of great. It unburdens you. That’s one of the gifts the original Star Wars gives so generously: When you watch the film the first time, you don’t know exactly what the Empire is trying to do. You know they want to control by fear and you know they want to take over, but you don’t really know all their plans. You don’t really understand what it would be like for Luke to become a Jedi, let alone who his father was. You don’t really know what the Clone Wars were, or what the Republic was really about or what it looked like. All of those massive story elements are merely brushstrokes in A New Hope. In 1977, none of those things were clear to anyone and maybe not even entirely to George Lucas.